Tag: sustainability

Data centers are expanding rapidly to support the rise of artificial intelligence, and their energy consumption is projected to account for up to 17 percent of U.S. electricity by the end of the decade. Currently, about one-third of that power goes toward cooling the chips that run AI models. A new startup founded by two MIT researchers aims to change that by adapting a technique originally designed for nuclear reactors.

Ferveret, co-founded by former MIT postdoc Reza Azizian and MIT Professor Matteo Bucci, has developed a liquid cooling system that uses no water and significantly less electricity than traditional air-based methods. The system submerges computer servers in a specialized fluid that absorbs heat far more efficiently than air. What sets it apart from other liquid cooling solutions is the size and behavior of the bubbles it generates: Ferveret’s Adaptive Phase Cooling (APC) technology produces much smaller bubbles that detach from the server surfaces more frequently, accelerating the heat transfer process.

The company is already testing its technology with several major players, including CleanSpark, FuriosaAI, and Switch, one of the largest data center operators in the U.S. In collaboration with UCLA’s computer science department, Ferveret demonstrated that its APC solution improves computational power efficiency by 15 percent compared to state-of-the-art liquid cooling. When combined with the startup’s power control software, the system can boost the number of tokens generated per watt by up to 35 percent, according to the company.

“Our goal is to make data centers as sustainable as possible and help them use every single watt of power to generate tokens, which are the most useful outputs,” says Azizian. “Our system enables the operation of more powerful chips, it helps data centers waste a lot less energy, and it accomplishes all that with zero water consumption.”

The founders’ journey began during Azizian’s postdoc at MIT in 2013, where he worked with Bucci on heat transfer in nuclear reactors. After stints at Microsoft and Nvidia, Azizian realized the cooling inefficiencies in data centers firsthand. “I thought, ‘Holy crap, this is not how you cool facilities,’” he recalls. The pair founded Ferveret in 2021, applying decades of knowledge from nuclear engineering to optimize heat removal in computing environments.

Ferveret’s system uses a liquid with a low boiling point and no toxic PFAS chemicals. The process, inspired by subcooled boiling in reactors, creates bubbles that quickly recondense, hastening the cooling cycle. The modular design—each server fits into a small box—makes deployment easier than traditional immersion tanks. The company also offers control software that dynamically adjusts power to each server for maximum efficiency.

Beyond energy savings, the water-free cooling opens new possibilities for data center location. “The sun shines in places where you don’t have much water, so the advantage of us being water-free is we allow you to build data centers where you have solar energy but nothing to cool the data center down,” says Bucci. This could enable data centers in regions like Africa, the Middle East, and parts of America that lack water resources.

Ferveret is part of Nvidia’s Inception program and is in talks with major cloud computing companies. The startup plans to announce expanded partnerships later this year as it scales its technology to support the growing AI industry without straining the planet.